


Your Grease Matches My Salt

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: Scooby Doo! Mystery Incorporated (Cartoon 2010)
Genre: Communication, Complicated Relationships, Developing Relationship, F/M, Friends to Lovers to Friends to Lovers again, Getting Back Together, Hamburgers, Post-Canon, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, imposter syndrome, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21857398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Velma and Shaggy have a heart-to-heart over burgers some weeks after the Nibiru incident leaves them stranded in an alternate timeline.
Relationships: Velma Dinkley/Norville "Shaggy" Rogers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	Your Grease Matches My Salt

**Author's Note:**

> i rewatched SDMI because i have pneumonia and this is my comfort show check

“I wonder what things would have been like for us, in this timeline,” Shaggy says somewhere between his fourth and fifth burgers. Velma, still nursing the only one she plans on ordering tonight, looks up at him and frowns. 

“What?”

“I just mean, like—“ Shaggy licks his fingers clean of grease and then points, first at himself, and then at her. “—y’know. You and me.” He stares at her like he’s expecting her to understand his vague attempt at communication, and when she doesn’t do anything more than blink in confusion, he points again more emphatically. “ _Us.”_

Understanding finally hits, and Shaggy must see it in her face, because he stops his frantic gesticulating and goes back to his burger. 

“Yeah, I guess things would have turned out differently here,” Velma says thoughtfully. She picks up a fry and twirls it in her fingers, turning her gaze downwards to watch the salt get lost on the pad of her forefinger and thumb. “They did turn out differently, but… for _us_ , I mean.” 

It’s less awkward than it used to be to talk about the relationship they’d once been in, but it’s not as not-awkward as it will ever get. At least, she vehemently hopes that this isn’t as far from it as they’ll ever get. If she’s being honest, though, she hasn’t exactly given it much thought in the past couple of months. Between their run-in with the evil entity in their alternate timeline, the week they’d spent in this new timeline’s Crystal Cove, and the road trip they’ve been on in order to make their way to Miskatonic University, their lives have been too much of a whirlwind for her to spare any thought for the feelings she’d never quite finished sorting out for Shaggy. 

She bites the fry in half, chews it, and firmly swallows the spit-covered wad of potato before she tries to come up with something else to say. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know what could have happened between us. Or what _did_ happen.” An icy hand grips her heart momentarily, with sharpened claws that she has learned to recognise well since their sudden arrival in this timeline. It’s an anxiety that she had once believed herself well-past; no doctor had ever seen her long enough in Crystal Cove to diagnose her, but she’d done enough research on her own to attribute “Imposter Syndrome” to her irrational fear that she would never be good enough for anyone around her. And just as she’d begun finding herself…

“I know.” Shaggy shoves the rest of his burger in his mouth. Velma does the same with the other half of her fry and looks back up at him. She comes face-to-face with a disconcerting seriousness written over Shaggy’s features. It’s the same expression he’d worn when he’d volunteered to infiltrate the ranks of the Kriegstaffebots in order to save the rest of the citizens of Crystal Cove. 

It makes her nervous. 

“Shaggy--”

He interrupts her, swallowing down his burger with a gulp and putting a hand up. “Hang on, Velm. I-- I gotta say something. I know you might not want to hear it, but like… _ma-a-an,_ I really messed up with you. With… _us_. I don’t know if the me here messed up too, but even if he didn’t, I did. I, like, could’ve done so many things different when we were dating, and I _totally_ didn’t, and it was wrong of me. And we never _really_ talked about what happened, because you were mad at me, and I was, like, scared.

“You know I never dated anyone before, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that I chose Scooby Doo over you. I never shoulda put you _or_ Scoob in the middle, and--”

Velma reaches across the table before she thinks better of it and puts her hand down over Shaggy’s, cupping it gently. Her fingers are still a little grainy with salt, and his hand is greasy from whatever sauce this hotel puts in their burgers, but the contact is grounding for her. It seems like it might be grounding for him, too, because he stops talking abruptly and stares at her like she’s grown a second head. 

“It’s okay, Shaggy,” she says, and for the first time since their breakup, it actually _does_ feel okay. “Part of it was my fault, too. I wanted you to like me so bad that I risked not only our relationship _and_ our friendship, but your friendship with Scooby as well. That wasn’t fair of me to do.” She’s had time to sit with this, to sit and think and mull over everything that happened. Yes, she still thinks about how handsome Shaggy looks when he’s knuckle-deep in a seven-layer sandwich sometimes, but… she’s also aware that she’s not perfect. The entire Nibiru incident more than proved that.

Things that aren’t rooted in science tend to be a little sticky, a little messy, and _love_ is definitely one of those things. 

Shaggy still looks like he’s seen a ghost. (Velma checks discreetly over her shoulder to make sure there isn’t one; even though this hotel is supposedly spook-free, they can never be certain, since crazy things seem to follow them everywhere they go, even in this world without mysteries. There’s no ghost, much to her relief; she loves mystery as much as the rest of the gang, but the other three already turned in early because of the phantom they’d caught that morning, and she doesn’t want to wake them if she doesn’t have to.) He glances down to their hands, his own gaze as unsubtle as ever. 

“Do you ever want things to, like, be different between us?” he asks after a moment. He looks back up at her and, to his credit and Velma’s surprise, holds her gaze steadily. 

Velma knows her cheeks go pink. She can’t _help_ it, not when Shaggy is looking at her with those ridiculous round eyes and the stupid puppy-eyed expression she knows he gets from Scooby. She holds Shaggy’s gaze right back, though. She’s not about to be the one to look away, not when they’re _finally_ having a conversation like this without any chance of interruption. 

“Sometimes,” she admits, proud when her voice doesn’t crack. “Do you?” 

Shaggy turns his hand so that their fingers can lace together. His hand is still greasy, and hers are still salty, but their hands fit together like puzzle pieces regardless. “Like, sometimes,” he says quietly. His voice _does_ crack. Velma doesn’t hold it against him. 

“I want to be your friend,” Velma says, matching the softness of his voice. “First and foremost, Shaggy, I want to be your friend. And I want to _stay_ your friend, whether or not we date or we don’t date or we do something in between. You’re too important to me to lose you again.” 

“Ditto,” Shaggy says, his fingers twitching and then tightening around hers. “If we do date, or if we don’t, or if we… do something in between--” His voice wavers with a curiosity that suggests that he isn’t quite sure what that means, and Velma feels a swell of affection for him swoop in her stomach. “--whatever. Whatever happens, we tell the rest of the gang. Like, no more secrets.” 

“Not even from Scooby?”

The grin that cracks over Shaggy’s lips is somehow both sheepish and fond. _“Especially_ not from Scooby. He’ll always be my best pal. If he’s jealous, like, that’s his deal, not mine.” 

Velma can’t bite back the shy, sly smile that starts to light up her own face. “Why, Shaggy Rogers, I think that’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.” 

Shaggy blushes this time, his cheeks going a fiery red without any warning. Velma feels her grin grow bigger.

“Velma, do you wanna, like, try dating me again? I know I’m--” He laughs, his nervous, breathy laugh he always lets off when he’s trying not to freak out. “--not the easiest guy to date, but things will be different this time.” 

She feels a little bit like she’s going to pass out and throw up at the same time, but it’s the best anxiety she’s felt in weeks. “I would like that.” Things _will_ be different; she makes a silent promise to herself here and now to not try and change Shaggy, that she’ll just enjoy him the way he is and talk to him about anything that bothers her. “I would like that a lot.” 

Shaggy’s grin matches her own, stretching over his burger-greasy cheeks, and Velma laughs a little. She disentangles their fingers to reach for a napkin, and she wipes her own fingers before offering it to Shaggy. He laughs sheepishly and accepts it, and while he scrubs semi-futilely at the grime on his hands, she watches him with a feeling that, for the first time since Nibiru, she’s finally right back where she belongs. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments are love! Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans.


End file.
